Licensing Plans

Proposals to improve teaching

Doctors are licensed. So are lawyers, hairdressers and real estate agents. Should schoolteachers be licensed too?

At present, most public school teachers are required only to hold state certificates. Unlike licenses, these are usually awarded automatically when teacher candidates graduate from an accredited education program. Once granted, such certificates usually extend through a lifetime of teaching--unless the holder is convicted of a crime or proved flagrantly incompetent.

This year, though, the state of Oklahoma decided that aspiring teachers would be required to take exams to show they know their subjects. If they pass they are licensed, but only for a probationary period of up to two years. During that time they will have to prove their classroom skills to the satisfaction of a panel of professional educators in order to remain in teaching. One aim of Oklahoma's internship program is to force the educators at state teachers colleges to improve their own techniques lest their graduates fail the licensing test. Similarly stiff internship requirements have been adopted in Georgia and Massachusetts.

The toughest state teacher licensing program so far has already received preliminary approval by New York's powerful Board of Regents. The New York program requires an annual review of the performance of all public school teachers, as well as a one-year internship in the classroom before a new teacher is granted a license. It also provides for a new statewide teaching board to oversee professional performance, as medical and other professional boards do.

In the Midwest, attempts to test new teachers before they teach have not fared as well. State legislatures in Kansas, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri and Wisconsin have let competency testing proposals die in committee. Teachers' unions are generally wary of licensing, and have sought to ensure that teachers themselves control licensing standards. Parent-teacher associations often are afraid that state wide professional boards set up to judge teachers will destroy local control of schools.

Underlying most current licensing reform proposals is the assumption that teaching can be improved by making the field more professional through use of measurable standards and uniform review procedures. In marked contrast, another licensing proposal is aimed at wresting control of teacher standards away from the present educational establishment. That radical notion has been proposed by Philosopher Mortimer Adler, 77, who argues that most of the nation's education schools and departments "are themselves the reason why our schools are staffed by woefully incompetent, uneducated, illiterate, unmotivated teachers."

Adler's plan: Require teachers to pass state board examinations before being allowed into the classroom. Tests of teacher competency are already required in 14 states. But as Adler sees it, such tests should be designed more broadly, to measure knowledge not just of teaching theory and basic pedagogic skills but of history, great literature and art. Furthermore, says Adler, the tests should be prepared "by the leading critics of our school system and of our teachers." Adler's plan could enhance opportunities for educated aspirants to become teachers by performing successfully on the licensing exams, while making the mere accumulation of required education course credits less important.

Adler would, in effect, weaken control of teaching by teachers. Other reformers seek to strengthen the organization of teaching as a profession. But all are in agreement on one fundamental: teaching and teacher education alike are in urgent need of overhaul.

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